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SHADRACH, 



1851 



In the year 185 1, a restaurant known as the 
" Cornhill Coffee-House " stood in what was 
then Cornhill Square, in Boston. 

It was a house famous for its coffee and its 
steaks ; a good breakfast was to be had there, 
or a bit of luncheon. On cold winter morn- 
ings, especially, hot coffee was in great de- 
nand; and no one was surprised, when, one 
norning in February, Patrick Riley and 
Frederic Warren, United States deputy mar- 
shalls, entered together and seated themselves 
at one of the tables in the dining-hall. 

A white-aproned waiter, a negro, stepped for- 
ward to take their orders. They asked for some 
coffee ; he went to fetch it, and soon returning, 
set two fragrant cups before them. 



4 

The new-comers showed no haste, but sipped 
and dallied, looking about them as though ex- 
pecting some one. 

The truth was, they had come to the coffee- 
house on a secret errand ; they were there to 
capture a fugitive slave. 

The fugitive, Shadrach, had escaped from 
Norfolk, Virginia, on the 3d of May, 1850. 
His master, John De Bree, had traced him to 
Boston, and had sent a certain John Caphart 
in search of him. Caphart knew Shadrach to 
be in that coffee-house, and had taken out a 
warrant against him. Riley had the warrant 
in his pocket, and was to make the arrest, 
but did not know Shadrach by sight. A man 
w^ho did know Shadrach, and who had agreed 
to betray him, was to appear and let Riley 
know, by sign or signal, whom to seize. Riley 
and Warren awaited the signal; it was not 
given. 

The white-aproned negro for his part awaited 
their pleasure, little guessing the errand on 
which they had come. 



5 

At last, drinking the coffee hastily, the two 
men rose to go out and see what this delay 
might mean. 

A passage led from the dining-hall to the 
bar-room. As the negro went through this 
passage with Riley and Warren at his back, 
two other men met him face to face, seized 
him one by one arm, one by the other, and 
dragged him from the house. 

Nine men in all had been lurking in and about 
the coffee-house to take part in the arrest ; they 
now forced their prisoner from the back door 
of the coffee-house through another building to 
Court Square, and into the Court House. 

Riley then began to understand that this 
man, the very waiter who had brought his 
coffee and taken the money for his bill, was 
no other than Shadrach, the fugitive he had 
been so impatient to seize. 

Shadrach, still in his waiter's apron, appealed 
wildly to his captors, to the bystanders, to the 
constable, hoping that some one would take 
his part. 



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" Who is it that claims me ? " he cried. 

Sawin, one of the men who had him in 
charge, gave some name. 

'' I don't know him," said Shadrach. 

Sawin gave another name. 

" I don't know him," said Shadrach again. 

Turning to the constable he began to pour 
forth his story. The constable stopped him, 
saying, " Don't tell me anything. I might be 
made a witness against you. Don't tell any 
one but your counsel." 

It was good advice. Shadrach choked back 
his words, and was silent. Mr. List was already 
at hand to act as counsel, and some one who 
knew Shadrach and was friendly to him sug- 
gested sending also for Mr. Davis. 

The Commissioner was called ; the trial was 
about to begin. Officers guarded the entrance. 
The Commissioner asked Shadrach if he wished 
for counsel. Shadrach replied that he did ; that 
his friends had gone for counsel for him. 

A number of people, both colored and white, 
now gathered in the court-room. Mr. Sewall, 



7 
Mr. Loring, and Mr. Davis came. Speaking in 
behalf of the prisoner, they asked for a delay. 
It was granted ; the trial was put off until the 
following Tuesday, and the court adjourned. 

The spectators, finding that no trial would 
take place that day, made their way out again, 
talking the matter over as they went. A num- 
ber of persons stopped to speak to Shadrach. 
One of them, a tall young colored man, lin- 
gered, and grasping Shadrach's hand, said, 
" We will stand by you till death." Riley 
checked him ; an officer hustled him away. 

The court-room was soon emptied of every 
one except Shadrach, the counsel who had 
leave to consult with him there, a few report- 
ers, and the officers. Shadrach was confined 
there because no one knew what else to do 
with him. He could not be lodged in any 
jail belonging to the County or State, because 
he had not been arrested under State law. It 
was the United States Government, the nation 
itself, that made slave-catching its business ; 
but the United States had no jail in Boston, 



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and Riley was at his wits' end for a place in 
which to keep his prisoner. He sent to Com- 
modore Downes to know whether the Navy 
Yard might be used as a jail. Commodore 
Downes returned word that it miorht not. 
Shadrach, therefore, was imprisoned, under 
guard, in the court-room. 

From time to time the door of the court- 
room had to be opened to let people pass. 
It swung outward, and each time that it was 
opened it was seized and held from without. 
A crowd of excited people thronged the outer 
steps of the Court House ; a number of them, 
mostly negroes, had ventured into the passage 
leading to the court-room and were attempting, 
not very vigorously at first, to force an entrance. 
Their dark fingers could be seen all along the 
edge of the slowly closing door. 

At two o'clock, Mr. Sewall and Mr. Loring 
had finished what they had to say to Shadrach 
and had gone. Mr. Davis was still there, but he 
also was going. The voices upon the other 
side of the door showed that the mood of the 



9 

crowd had not changed. " Take him out, 
bo3^s ! go in and take him out ! " was the cry. 

Mr. Davis went to the door to pass through. 
Very cautiously the officers opened it a Httle 
way. Mr. Davis sHpped through the narrow 
space, and the officers braced themselves for 
a pull. But their pulling was in vain ; this 
time the door did not close. Feet and shoul- 
ders came to the aid of the fingers along the 
edge, and the space grew wider. 

"They're coming in!" rose the shout. 

Other officers rushed to the door. They 
were too late. The wooden door was past 
control. 

A sreen door screened the wooden one, — 
they tried to hold that. The upright piece of 
the ereen door cracked. Both doors flew wide. 

Twenty or thirty men rushed in. Shadrach 
bounded from his place, and ran around the 
rail to meet them. 

They snatched him up in their arms, rushed 
with him from the room and passed him, almost 
flun^ him, down the stairs. A woman in the 



lO 

crowd at the foot of the steps shrieked, " God 
bless you ! have they got you ? " and he was 
away. 

He left Boston that evening with a trusty 
friend and drove, in a chaise, in the direction of 
Fitchburg. This friend was afterwards heard to 
say that he would never part with the horse that 
drew them over that road, but would keep him 
always for the sake of that good night's work. 

Shadrach was bound for Canada, where his 
master would have no power to claim him ; he 
stopped by the way at Leominster, a towm not 
far from Fitchburg, and found shelter in an 
antislavery household there. 

A law, called " The Fugitive Slave Law," 
forbade the sheltering of runaway slaves, but 
certain households were secretly pledged to 
hide and protect the fugitives. Such stopping- 
places were sometimes called the stations of 
the "Underground Railroad," — the Under- 
ground Railroad being no railroad at all, but 
the means of escape planned by Abolitionists 
for the safe conduct of fugitive slaves. 



1 1 
Shadrach found that an Antislavery Meeting 
was to be held in Leominster ; indeed, two of 
the speakers, who were to address tlie meeting, 
came to pass the night at the house where he 
was concealed. They brought the latest Boston 
news, and the rescue was to be the main sub- 
ject of their discourse. 

Shadrach was eager to hear what they had 
to say, yet he knew that it would never do 
to show himself openly at the hall. He 
thought of a way in which he could do what 
he wished, without putting himself or his friends 
in danger. 

At the appointed time the doors were opened 
and the audience gathered in the hall. Before 
the speaking began, a tall ungainly figure, 
seemingly a negro woman, strode to a seat 
among the rest. The rather short skirts of this 
person, the broad shoulders, the large feet, and 
long, swinging gait passed unnoticed in the 
crowd ; nor did any one suspect the reason for 
that listener's presence, or for his keen interest 
in the recital of Shadrach's adventures. 




011 837 277 3 • 



^^ °"?^Y ^^ CONGRESS 
12 

When the meeting en 
ped away, and to this v 
was Shadrach, the fugitive, who sat in that 
Leominster hall disguised in women's clothes, 
and listened to his own story as it was told 
from a platform. 

About a month later, a Canada correspondent 
wrote to the Boston "Commonwealth," — 

" You will be pleased to learn that Mr. Charles Boyn- 
ton . . . saw the famous Shadrach in Montreal on Saturday 
last. Mr. Boynton had quite a long conversation with 
him. He looked quite well : declared he had no desire to 
return to ' the land of the free and the home of the brave.' 
He has opened a barber's shop in the city. He also told 
Mr. Boynton that he had received fifty dollars from a lady 
in Boston, a few days ago." 

The rescue cheered the Abolitionists ' for 
many a day. Theodore Parker wrote in his 
diary: "I think it the most noble deed done 
in Boston since the destruction of the tea in 
1775.^ I thank God for it!" 

1 The tea was destroyed in 1773. 



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